Bill Bryson is the author of numerous books, including The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990); A Walk in the Woods (1998); and A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003). He announced his retirement from writing in 2020, though he subsequently released an audiobook. Bryson’s style typically employs humor to highlight his personal observations and journalistic explorations. In Notes from a Small Island, Bryson travels across the island of Great Britain, a place where he is both an insider (he has lived there for 20 years at the time of writing) and an outsider (he is American by birth). This offers him a unique perspective on the cultural traditions and deeply layered history of his adoptive nation. After the publication of Notes from a Small Island, he eventually became a dual citizen of the US and England, honored with the Order of the British Empire in 2006.

The book also functions as a kind of bildungsroman, retracing Bryson’s first forays into England and into his career in journalism. As Bryson recalls his first night in Dover, sleeping on a bench near the harbor, he remembers himself as “a young man with more on his mind than in it” (8).